International Activity
International Strategy and Activities
Cap Digital aims to be one of the leaders of the European business clusters in digital content. To do this, it needs to work closely with the European Commission, thereby building its international image and anchoring itself as an intermediary defining the actions of the digital content sector.
With an exceptional national base of expertise and experience among its members, Cap Digital also aims to be one of the leading business clusters for digital content in Europe. In this context, it is working closely in various projects, networks, and associations with its partner clusters and the European Commission, developing both French and European leadership in the Creative Industries.
Cap Digital is also responsible for providing SMEs the means to build and participate in European consortiums. It promotes national innovative projects so that they can become the foundation for new European projects. This process is another way for Cap Digital to support member companies implicated in the projects.
In this context, too, Cap Digital leverages the innovative potential of its regional SMEs, enabling them to collaborate with other creatives in trans-national European consortia in order to expand their expertise and, critically, gain access to a wider, international market across Europe and beyond.
Lobbying on a European Level
Cap Digital was represented in ISTAG, the Information Society Technologies Advisory Group, by its managing director Patrick Cocquet in 2006 and 2007. ISTAG’s mission ended with the publication of the report on the digital content sector, “New Business Sectors in Information and Communication Technologies: the Content Sector as a case study.” Subsequently, Patrick Cocquet was appointed member of the CIP Strategic Advisory Board on business competitiveness and innovation, extending his involvement as committee member through 2008 and 2009.
Cap Digital was one of the early members of the European Digital Content Think Tank, a collaborating group of leading European Digital Creative Industry clusters, including representatives from Helsinki, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, and Venice. The mission of the Think Tank is to unite the expertise, experience, and creative potential of the national clusters and their representatives in order to leverage national innovative strengths to create an effective European Digital Creative alliance, capable of overcoming a fragmented market, and creating national and European Creative Industry leadership. The strategy employed by the Think Tank is to understand the needs of their SMEs on a national and international level, lobby the EC for the necessary support infrastructure, be available to the EC as an advisory body, and to support the development of new policy measures and tools to further the creation and growth of Digital Creative Industry value in Europe.
At the 2008 ICT event in Lyon, Patrick Cocquet was among a group of representatives of major Creative Industry organisations selected to meet Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media. Along with the other representatives, Patrick Cocquet had the opportunity to communicate directly to the Commissioner his ideas formed over three years with Cap Digital and his involvement in the European Digital Content Think Tank. Responding directly to a request by the commissioner, Cap Digital, IIP CREATE of the Netherlands, Barcelona Media, Crossroads Copenhagen, and the South East Media Network subsequently submitted to the Commission a “Proposal for a European ICT/Media Industry (SME) support platform” (March, 2009), with a series of recommendations targeted at overcoming a fragmented European market, and achieving optimum value from SME innovation on a European scale.
Implementing a Network of Clusters
INNET
INNO-Nets is a European program for inter-cluster cooperation. INNET, open to all technologies, is one of the program’s main actions, bringing together 18 European partners, including national and regional funding agencies.
At the French national level, Oséo is responsible for INNET. Oséo organises regular calls for proposals for French clusters, with the goal of initiating or reinforcing European technological initiatives and promoting inter-cluster relationships, to benefit SMEs.
The INNET program aims to “ encourage at the European level, a whole range of activities to enhance innovation by initiating, establishing, or developing transnational technological partnerships and cooperation for SMEs in the context of technological /business clusters’ European opening, and by their officers” (Oséo). The purpose is for SMEs to engage in transnational cooperation and ultimately, to start collaborative projects such as PCRD, EUREKA, and Eurostars.
In March 2009, Cap Digital was selected to participate in the INNET program, with two missions in Berlin. The program was an opportunity for Cap Digital to reinforce its ties with the clusters Technologiestiftung berlin (TSB) and XInnovations as well as with the network, Newthinking Communications, and the Senate, the Berlin city hall.
The first mission in June 2009 was focused on open source. Seven SMEs from Cap Digital (AF83, Altic, Bearstech, Coretechs, Exo-platform, VizionR, and Xwiki) participated in the “Linuxtag” (Linux Day), an open source show, where they met members of TSB and New Thinking.
The second mission, December 2009, focused on digital education. Cap Digital brought its member companies Aldebaran Robotics, Hexatraining, ITOP, KTM Advance, Libcast, and WhP, to the OnlineEduca Berlin 2009 conference, where they meet members of the Xinnovation, Senate, TSB and Bitkom.
REDICT
In 2007, Cap Digital helped to create the REDICT project which brings together business clusters and organizations from six European regions. Cap Digital is participating in this project with the Paris Regional Economic Development Agency (PREDA) and the Institut Télécom. The project began in January 2008 and has the goal of sharing knowledge and good practices, and improving the coordination European activity.
REDICT Project Goals for SMEs:
• An opportunity for SMEs to test their products and services in a wide city-network with test facilities
• An opportunity to build European R&D projects
• Accessing potential clients and partners
• Use of REDICT city network contacts to extend sale proposals on a European level
Two conferences have been organized by the REDICT partners. For the PRIT (Paris Region Innovation Tour), the partners came together in Paris to present their industry networks to Cap Digital SMEs. Over 30 Cap Digital SMEs participated in these conferences in order to gain a better understanding of the interaction between the different European partners, to understand how to exploit these networks, and to get to know the major European layers to which the network can give them access.
A second event was organized during the ICT in Lyon, 2008. REDICT was selected to make a presentation in the Networking Session, the aim of these sessions being to explain the networking activity financed by the European Commission. REDICT was presented to over 40 people from different kinds of organizations. After the meeting, six European clusters expressed their interest in joining the network, clearly illustrating the potential of such a network organisation on a European level.
Eurodigimeet
Cap Digital and the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry organized the first European Eurodigimeet conference in 2007. This event, located in Paris, brought together over 100 participants from 12 European clusters and was an important success as one of the many events Cap Digital has decided to promote for digital content in the Ile de France region.
The second edition of Eurodigimeet took place on June 9 and 10, 2008. This edition targeted principally European clusters and research groups, including SMEs. Meetings were organized for the participating clusters on the first day and the second day consisted of B2B meetings between companies and research labs. There were a total of 15 international clusters, 100 or so companies, and representatives from Belgium, Austria, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and France.
For the third consecutive year of Eurodigimeet, Cap Digital, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Paris, and the Enterprise Europe Network held the event 5th June, 2009. On this occasion, the Eurodigimeet took place within the wider framework of Futur en Seine, the pioneering international event organized by Cap Digital.
http://www.futur-en-seine.org/en